Outdoors Column
Snowboarding And The Risks Of Athletic Competition
It would be unfair to athletes and sports spectators to strictly regulate what can and can’t be performed during competition.By Joseph Friedrichs, 1-05-10
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| A snowboarder takes a chance in the Mountain West. | |
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Five days after a nasty snowboard accident, Olympic hopeful and top-notch snowboarder Kevin Pearce remains in critical condition Tuesday at a Utah hospital.
Pearce, 22, was hoping to qualify for next month’s Winter Games in Vancouver when he mislanded a complicated jump on Thursday in a halfpipe at Park City, Utah.
Pearce was completing a twisting double back flip when he caught the front side of his snowboard and landed on his head. He was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.
Snowboarding has been an Olympic sport since 1998. Each year, and seemingly with each competition more extreme moves are attempted. For example, how many people on this planet could perform a twisting double black flip? If you’re not sure, let me clue you in - there aren’t many.
All the same, Pearce’s unfortunate injury has raised the issue of what the International Olympic Committee should do to prevent or regulate what an athlete attempts while competing. The answer is simple: The I.O.C. should stick with its current regulations and allow athletes of any sport to put their bodies on the line at the risk of injury and the hopes of glory.
It would be unfair to athletes and sports spectators to strictly regulate what can and can’t be performed during competition. That is how sports progress and evolve. It’s a risk to create a new trick in snowboarding. It’s also a risk for a goalie to make a diving save in hockey. The same can be said for essentially every sport, no matter what time of year. Athletics can be dangerous, plain and simple. However, regulating what can be performed based on isolated incidents is wrong. The right move is to encourage progression in sports competition. Allow athletes to take chances, it makes sports more interesting.
The Pearce family remains in Utah while Kevin recovers, and hopefully he will very soon. Again, it was an unfortunate accident and a twisting double back flip is an amazingly difficult move. But it was a conscious effort from Pearce, one of the top U.S. snowboarders, to attempt the trick. And while others throughout the world continue to take on difficult, and often dangerous athletic tasks each day, all we can do is hope Pearce recovers quickly and likewise encourage advancement in the challenging world of sports.
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Comments
I doubt most athletes understand the reality of life after a brain injury. Most people in their 20s - athletes or not - are still under the illusion that they are invincible. I spent many years working with disabled individuals; many were young men who did reckless things and paid dearly for it. My experience leads me to feel there should be a limit on how far athletes are allowed to go. I can see how others feel differently, I just wonder how many truly understand the consequences of always trying to push the envelope.
Back in the smoky days of early freestyle, the body and vegetable count was super high until the sanctioning bodies prohibited inverted aerials in the bumps.
In an "uncontrolled" line, that's a good deal. FIS (or whoever) has sanctioned air tricks in the proper format, the big jumps with a given, standardized dimension and runout.
Same with the pipe, they are pretty much standard. The idea is to give a consistent platform where error has consequence. The odds will never be perfect, but good odds are better than no odds.
Even so, there are times. I sure hope Kevin will come back to normal life. As far as comp is concerned, he's done.
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